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yaPlayer (AppStore link), an absolutely stunning excellent video player when it comes to H.264 and MPEG-2 playback (main review; last piece of news), has just become free – along with some new features and bugfixes. Now, there is no point in NOT downloading it – after all, what can you lose? It won't cost you anything.

(the update list – yaPlayer's annotated by a red rectangle. As always, click for enlargened version)

The h.264 decoder of the player is so good that it doesn't really stutter while playing back the standardized Monsters on today's top hardware (the iPhone 5 and the iPad 4). Not so with older models (and the considerably slower iPad Mini / iPod touch 5), of course.

(the main playback screen of the player running on an iPhone 5 showing 1, it displays the embedded subtitle track 2, doesn't use low resolution 3, makes use of the entire screen estate of new, 16:9 models)

As usual,

- you won't want to use third-party video players like yaPlayer (or anything else) if all you watch is non-music videos purchased from the iTunes Store. (These videos, even the free ones, are all copy protected and can't even be played back in any third-party video player. Given that third-party video players add a lot of functionality the built-in stock Videos player lacks, this is very annoying if you ask me. Nevertheless, this is iOS and has a lot of similar, pretty silly restrictions. No wonder a lot of power users are leaving the platform for more open ones like Android or, now, Windows Phone 8 / RT and its far better support for unrestricted(!) media playback thru third-party apps.)

- it's H.264 and MPEG-2 videos that you will want to play with this player and not, say, WMV or MSMPEG-4 ones. The player doesn't really excel at playing back these video formats – you'll need another player to properly play those back.

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<p>Werner Ruotsalainen is an iOS and Java programming lecturer who is well-versed in programming, hacking, operating systems, and programming languages. Werner tries to generate unique articles on subjects not widely discussed. Some of his articles are highly technical and are intended for other programmers and coders.</p>
<p>Werner also is interested in photography and videography. He is a frequent contributor to not only mobile and computing publications, but also photo and video forums. He loves swimming, skiing, going to the gym, and using his iPads. English is one of several languages he speaks.</p>

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